The Elevator (December 2017)

Lumizen Pte LtdModern farmers are advancing into systematic and deterministic farming to produce consistent good produce. Lumizen’s patented lighting controls compensates variations in LEDs to produce uniform illumination as intensity and colour requirements changes. Uniform illumination increases quality of light received by the plants, and thereby improves quality, yield, and shorten time to harvest. Together with data analytics, our farming customers benefit from an ecosystem of scientific farming that ensures reliable outcome in every harvest.

To overcome the shortcomings preventing wider adoption of LED lamps in farming, we have designed one of the lightest and smallest lamps, which are also highly customisable due to our modular strategy. Running fully on DC, our lamps also produce one of the lowest amount of heat and is compliant with regulations throughout the world.

Livin’Wall (S) Pte LtdIndoor air pollution can be up to 5x more polluted than outdoor air. With more buildings being developed in the near horizon, there will be an uptick in detrimental post-renovation pollution to residential and commercial real estates. The patent-pending GUSH - AirPure Interior Paint has zero formaldehyde, nearly zero VOC emissions and helps purify indoor air for healthier living conditions. The odourless paint also releases negative ions, dries 30-50% faster than normal, and has antibacterial as well as anti-moulding properties, reducing labour time and costs. The paint is already in the commercialization phase and the team has painted more than 109 houses, 3 offices and part of a hospital in Indonesia, just over the past 5 months.

EDEN CLEAR NYP and Eden Clear have developed an additive for agricultural plastics that allows farmers to grow crops faster, increasing crop yields and value. This technology can be applied to any protective agricultural structure. Globally, agricultural crop production is a highly competitive market; with the time to harvest being critical to crop value. Our technology allows farms to speed up the growing process, shortening the time to harvest and increasing the productivity of the land. We have recently completed NUS Enterprise’s LLP programme and validated our Product-Market fit. We have established POC with in-house testing and are now looking to move to POV testing on a global scale. We have identified several collaboration partners for testing and commercialisation and are seeking business guidance and funding for farm trials in five global locations.

PV Module Recycling Global green initiatives see exponential increase in the number of solar panel installations around the world. However, most end-of-life or defective panels end up in landfills, posing potential danger to the environment due to leaching of toxic materials (such as lead) into ground water. Herein, Singapore Polytechnic has developed a one-stop solution for recycling crystalline silicon photovoltaics (PV) with over 90% reclaim rate from entire modules, down to their individual components, through green chemistry. Demonstrated in our laboratory with commercial panels measuring 1.7m x 1m, the technologies are ready for scaling up by integrating the current batch processes into a continuous one, thereby leading to industry adoption. This was the outcome of a recently completed EDB-NRF funded project. Jinko Solar Holding Co., one of the largest PV manufacturers in the world, has expressed interest in commercialise our PV recycling technologies.

Treatment Process of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Incineration Fly Ash using Colloidal Mesoporous Silica for Application in Polymer Matrix Composites The team has developed a cost-effective solution to transform municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration fly ash into reinforced fillers for fabrication of high quality composites. To achieve this, the toxic heavy metals in the ash are stabilised through using colloidal mesoporous silica nanoparticles. An estimated savings of 20-30% of production cost can be achieved for polymer fillers if the raw materials are originated from incineration ash. The market value of polymer composites is forecasted to reach US$89.4 billion by 2020. This technology also finds its potential in the construction industry, specifically for use in development of ready-mixed concrete. Thus, this technology will not only offer savings in disposal cost, but also create revenue from waste. It will also reduce the landfill pressure and extend its life-span. The team is looking for a commercialisation partnership, such as R&D collaboration, licensing and IP acquisition.

ELECTROFENTONConventional biological wastewater treatment often cannot meet the required discharge concentration limits in the case of industrial effluents enriched with bio-recalcitrant or toxic contaminants (e.g., electronics, pharma, sludge, etc.). The Lefebvre group at NUS addresses this issue with electrochemical oxidation of wastewater, relying solely on electricity for in-situ generation of the hydroxyl radical (•OH), a strong chemical oxidant that is able to mineralize an extensive variety of refractory pollutants. The group owns two patents proposing a combination of electrode materials for electro-Fenton and photoelectro-catalysis and extensive know-how on reactor design and operation for a variety of applications for pre- or post- treatment of industrial wastewater enriched with biorefractory organics over a broad range of organic loads (0.01 < COD < 100 g L-1). The aim is to bring this technology to commercialisation by working with commercialisation partners, scale-up partners and EPCs.